The Gates (Samuel Johnson vs. the Devil #1)(6)

Now, after so long, he had just made his first move.





IV

In Which We Learn About the Inadvisability of Attempting to Summon Up Demons, and of Generally Messing About with the Afterlife

SAMUEL AND BOSWELL SAT on the wall outside the Abernathy house and watched the world go by. As it was a quiet evening, and most people were indoors having their tea, there wasn’t a whole lot of the world to watch, and what there was wasn’t doing very much. Samuel shook his bucket and heard the sound of emptiness, which, as anyone knows, is not the same thing as no sound, since it includes all the noise that someone was expecting to hear, but doesn’t.7

Samuel didn’t want to go home. His mother had been preparing to go out for the evening when Samuel left the house. It was the first time that she had dressed up to go out since Samuel’s dad had left, and something about the sight of it had made Samuel sad. He didn’t know who she was going to meet, but she was putting on lipstick and making herself look nice, and she didn’t go to that kind of trouble when she was heading out to play bingo with her friends. She hadn’t questioned why her son was dressed as a ghost and carrying a Halloween bucket when it was not yet Halloween, for she was well used to her son doing things that might be regarded as somewhat odd.

The previous week, Samuel’s teacher, Mr. Hume, had phoned her at home to have what he described as a “serious conversation” about Samuel. Samuel, it emerged, had arrived for show and tell that day carrying only a straight pin. When Mr. Hume had called him to the front of the class, Samuel had proudly held up the pin.

“What’s that?” Mr. Hume had asked.

“It’s a pin,” said Samuel.

“I can see that, Samuel, but it’s hardly the most exciting of show and tells, now is it? I mean, it’s not exactly a rocket ship, like the one that Bobby made, or Helen’s volcano.”

Samuel hadn’t thought much of Bobby Goddard’s rocket ship, which looked to him like a series of toilet paper rolls covered in foil, or for that matter Helen’s volcano, even if it did produce white smoke when water was poured into its crater. Helen’s father was a chemist, and Samuel was pretty sure he’d had a hand in creating that volcano. Helen Kim, Samuel knew, couldn’t even put together a bowl made of lollipop sticks without detailed instructions and a large supply of solvent remover to get the glue, and assorted lollipop sticks, off her fingers afterward.

Samuel had stepped forward and held the pin under Mr. Hume’s nose.

“It’s not just a pin,” he said solemnly. Mr. Hume looked unconvinced, and also slightly nervous at having a pin rather closer to his face than he might have liked. There was no telling what some of these kids might do, given half a chance.

“Er, what is it, then?” said Mr. Hume.

“Well, if you look closely . . .”

Despite his better judgment, Mr. Hume found himself leaning forward to examine the pin.

“. . . really closely . . .”

Mr. Hume squinted. Someone had once given him a grain of rice with his name written upon it, which Mr. Hume had considered interesting but pointless, and he wondered if Samuel had somehow managed a similar trick.

“. . . you might just be able to see an infinite number of angels dancing on the head of this pin,” finished Samuel.8

Mr. Hume looked at Samuel. Samuel looked back at him.

“Are you trying to be funny?” asked Mr. Hume.

This was a question Samuel heard quite often, usually when he wasn’t trying to be funny at all.

“No,” said Samuel. “I read it somewhere. Theoretically, you can fit an infinite number of angels on the head of a pin.”

“That doesn’t mean that they’re actually there,” said Mr. Hume.

“No, but they might be,” said Samuel reasonably.

“Equally, they might not.”

“You can’t prove that they’re not there, though,” said Samuel.

“But you can’t prove that they are.”

Samuel thought about this for a couple of seconds, then said, “You can’t prove a negative proposition.”

“What?” asked Mr. Hume.

“You can’t prove that something doesn’t exist. You can only prove that something does exist.”

“Did you read that somewhere too?” Mr. Hume was having trouble keeping the sarcasm from his voice.

“I think so,” said Samuel, who, like most honest, straightforward people, had trouble recognizing sarcasm. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” said Mr. Hume. He realized that he sounded distinctly sulky, so he coughed, then said with more force, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”9

Samuel continued. “Which means that I have as much chance of proving that there are angels on the head of this pin as you have of proving that there aren’t.”

“Are you sure you’re only eleven?” asked Mr. Hume.

“Positive,” said Samuel.

Mr. Hume shook his head wearily.

“Thank you for that, Samuel. You can take your pin—and your angels—back to your desk now.”

“Are you certain you don’t want to keep it?” asked Samuel.

“Yes, I’m certain.”

“I have lots more.”